Signs, Wonders, and Gifts

In much of the scholarship on Paul, activities such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and miracle healings are either ignored or treated as singular occurrences. Typically, these practices are categorized in such a way that shields Paul and his followers from the influence of so-called paganism. In Signs, Wonders, and Gifts, Jennifer Eyl masterfully argues that Paul did, in fact, engage in range of divinatory and wonder-working practices that were widely recognized and accepted across the ancient Mediterranean. Eyl redescribes, reclassifies, and recontextualizes Paul's repertoire vis-�-vis such widespread, similar practices. Situating these activities within the larger framework of reciprocity that dominated human-divine relationships in antiquity, she demonstrates that divine powers and divine communication were bestowed as benefactions toward Paul and his gentile followers in proportion to their faithfulness and loyalty.

Throughout his letters, the apostle Paul consistently references signs, wonders, visions, miracles, divine healings, prophecies, and speaking in tongues. This book examines Paul's repertoire of divinatory and wonderworking practices and contextualizes them in their historical milieu. Furthermore, the book situates such practices within a framework of reciprocity that dominated human-divine relationships in antiquity. Insofar as Paul extends miraculous abilities to his gentile followers, these wondrous abilities come in proportion to their faithfulness.

"In Signs, Wonders, and Gifts: Divination in the Letters of Paul, Jennifer Eyl provides a convincing and nuance analysis of Paul's divinatory and wonderworking practices and the reciprocal relationship involved in the language of pistis. Theoretically savvy and empirically grounded, this is unquestionably a learned book that will become the standard work on the subject while being written in a style that will reward students as much as seasoned scholars." -- James Crossley, Professor of Bible, Society, and Politics in the Centre for the Social-Scientific Criticism of the Bible, St. Mary's University

"Jennifer Eyl places Paul's divinatory practices where they should be: front and centre. This is done in a way that is informed by the best thinking on ancient magic as a category, theory of religion, ethnicity, cognitive science, and social scientific description. This book challenges traditional Pauline scholarship in all the right ways." -- Zeba Crook, author of Reconceptualising Conversion: Patronage, Loyalty, and Conversion in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean

"Jennifer Eyl's Signs, Wonders, and Gifts represents a major contribution to scholarship - not only Christian Origins scholarship on the Pauline letters, but scholarship on divination, miracle-working, magic, and the character of religious specialists in the ancient world more generally. Eyl makes sense of Paul's views of, and practices around, miracles, "acts of power," and prophetic predictions by situating his language within the often-unspoken but deeply held intuitive convictions of the ancients about the gods, how the gods work, and how they interact with people. Paul's ideas, far from being unique or mysterious, are shown to be in harmony with the broader religious culture of the Roman Empire." -- William Arnal

"an effective, innovative, and provocative treatment of Paul in his religious milieu that will be of interest to many New Testament specialists. One can hope that scholarship increasingly participates in Eyl's unflinching commitment to an analysis of Paul within the Greek and Roman world and in so doing produces an ever clearer and more penetrating assessment of the Apostle and his achievements." -- Courtney Friesen, Religion